Broken
by InLoveWithLaughing
Summary: After the war Parvati tries desperately to hold Lavender together. "'I'm never there at the right moments'"


Description: After the war Parvati tries desperately to hold Lavender together. "'_I'm never there at the right moments'"_

Rating: T

_Disclaimer: Not mine *sigh*_

_**WARNING: Brief description of suicide.**_

_AN: For Amber in The Fic Exchange of Epic Proportions. She's get the first of many fics since the whole thing was her wonderful idea and she's my lovely wifey!_

* * *

The smell of sweat and blood permeate the air, choking Parvati as she pushes through the throng of fighters, unaware of who's on her side, who's trying to kill her, who just doesn't give a fuck anymore. A yellow spell narrowly misses her, singeing her robes. She screams as somebody grabs her ankle and kicks out before running even faster, leaving behind her a bleeding Dean Thomas.

She's entering another part of the castle now. The fighting is over here and only the dead or dying are left. She can barely see through the dust and smoke, but she can hear. She can hear the cries for help all around. She ignores them. She hears somebody croak her name, she thinks it's Luna Lovegood, but struggles on. Only one person matters now.

She bursts back onto the battlefield, wiping her streaming eyes and looking around desperately. Somehow, through the hundreds of people, she spots a familiar face. The one that matters. Lavender sees her at the same moment and is distracted. It's just for a second, but it's enough. Greyback slams into her, wrapping his arms around her in a deadly embrace, crushing her bones as he tears at her face.

Parvati doesn't know what happens next, but somehow it's over. They won. They should be celebrating. Nobody is. Too many are exactly like Parvati. Sat in the makeshift Hospital Wing, clinging onto their loved ones and praying for them to wake up.

OoO

The silence is maddening. No beeping machines, no bustling mediwizards. At first Parvati had hated them, now she'd give anything to get them back. To know that something was being done, that something could be done.

"Wake up," she whispers, and then louder, "Wake up. Wake up!"

Lavender doesn't wake up though. Her chest continues to rise slowly, her face unmoving. Parvati wants to shake her, wants to yell and scream and smash things until those blue eyes open. But she knows from experience that doesn't do anything.

She sits beside Lavender's bed for days, refusing to move for anything other than bathroom breaks, and so only cruel fate can be responsible for the face that she's gone when Lavender finally wakes up.

OoO

"I'm hideous," Lavender breathes. Her fingers hover over her scars, not quite touching skin. "I'm a- a troll!"

"Nah, way too sexy to be a troll," Parvati teases, wrapping her arms around her girlfriend's waist and trying to turn her away from the mirror. The first mirror she's seen since she woke up.

Lavender resists, refusing to look away from her face. "What am I going to now? I can't model like this!"

"You can- You can do something else."

"I can't! That was all I had! I can't- I'm not-"

She's becoming hysterical again, and Parvati felt her own heart rate pick up in response.

"You're beautiful," Parvati says, kissing the scars purposefully.

Lavender flinches away and meets Parvati's eyes in the mirror.

"I'm broken."

OoO

"How was your day?" Parvati asks, dropping her bags on the floor and a kiss on Lavender's cheek.

"God, stop messing up the place!" Lavender snaps, picking up the bags and taking them to the bedroom. "I don't spend all day cleaning so you can come back and mess everything up again."

Parvati knows Lavender doesn't mean for there to be a double meaning in the words, but they both hear it anyway.

"You cleaned again, then?" Parvati says, trying to change the subject.

"What else am I supposed to do?" Lavender says, sitting down on the sofa opposite her.

Parvati wants to sit next to her, wants to wrap her up in a hug and snuggle as she tells Lavender about her day. She wants to look at that beautiful face and not feel guilty. She wants a girlfriend who isn't afraid to go outside. The thoughts feel like a betrayal, are a betrayal, and Parvati finds herself making an excuse to go into the office and work all evening. Again.

OoO

Parvati isn't there the first time Lavender ventures out into the world again, and she will never forgive herself for that. She comes back home to a different woman than the one she left that morning. That one was cracked, held together only by whispered words of love and Parvati's gentle hands. This one is broken. Shattered. Stripped of all confidence in herself.

She curls up in bed and shudders with sobs, trying to muffle them with her fist. Snot and tears and spit create a puddle on the pillow, but Parvati can't pry it away from her. Can't even get her to admit that she's crying. She don't know what happened exactly, but she gathers from rumours the next day that cruel taunts and insults were thrown at her like stones in Diagon Alley because everyone knows she isn't normal. Not quite a werewolf, not quite a witch. A freak.

Parvati tries to tell her the truth, that she's not a freak, that's she's clever and kind and beautiful, but Lavender can never quite believe her.

OoO

"I feel like I'm never there at the right moments," she rants to Padma at dinner. "I couldn't save her and now I can't help her. She won't let me help her."

Padma listens, as Padma always does, and offers soft words of comfort and advice. "All you can do is be there for her. It'll be enough eventually," she says as Parvati leaves.

And, like the idiot she is, Parvati believes her. She goes home with fresh determination, an unquenchable desire to get it right this time. She'll make lists of things Lavender can do, she'll show her that she isn't useless, that she can still have a life. The only list she makes is the guest list for the funeral.

OoO

Parvati remembers the night so clearly sometimes that it takes her a moment to remember it's in the past.

The sight of Lavender's body, not soft and could-be-sleeping like in the movies, but hanging limply, could-be-nothing-but-dead from the ceiling, will haunt Parvati forever.


End file.
